


to sit in hell with you

by iiiOpheliaiii



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Mental Instability, Post-Season/Series 05, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:13:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26608060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iiiOpheliaiii/pseuds/iiiOpheliaiii
Summary: There is no fucking bigger thing, Tommy’s the fucking best. Tommy’s in fucking parliament and where is Alfie? Fucking Margate. Shooting at seagulls, like that’s not absolutely pathetic. Tommy Shelby’s not afraid of anybody and if he was it wouldn’t be fucking Alfie.He’s like a still tiger in the corner of Tommy’s eye, big and wild and cruel. He’s watching Tommy and he’s going to keep doing it. Tommy came here with no purpose and Alfie knows it. Alfie may be dead but there is still something carnivorous in him that smells blood and salivates at it.
Relationships: Tommy Shelby & Alfie Solomons
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	to sit in hell with you

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning: mentions suicide a few times in a casual manner

Tommy Shelby is not afraid of people.

Tommy Shelby is a devil-sent curse. Tommy Shelby eats up families and houses and streets and horses, girls and women and children all falling in front of his shiny rich man’s shoes. Tommy Shelby is a bad bad bad man.

Tommy Shelby knows he is a bad bad bad man. Nobody is better or badder. Not Sabini, not Billy Kimber.

Not his crazy crazy brother Arthur, who is made of violence. Arthur is bloody and nothing else. He is not evil.

Mr. Thomas Shelby, OBE, is evil and so he is not afraid of people.

Alfie Solomons is an unsettling man.

Alfie who died. Alfie the God.

Alfie Solomons is better than Tommy Shelby. This is what he thinks, and he doesn’t care if Tommy knows it. Alfie Solomons is not evil because Alfie Solomons doesn’t care.

 _For the good of the cause_ , but Tommy had of course known he wouldn’t, because Alfie Solomons does things for the good of Alfie Solomons.

The difference is that Tommy is mostly big and bad and evil, except for when he can’t be, and Alfie is always, always amused right up until he wants you fucking cut up. Tommy thinks that maybe he actually always wants you cut up, but he’s never been able to read Alfie like he can read everything else.

Tommy wants to kill himself. Alfie died because it didn’t bother him, and for that reason it didn’t stick.

Tommy won’t do it. He’s tried. He came out of the fog sicker than he went in, but he’s still here. He’s come to see Alfie, who might do it for him.

“What, may I be so bold as to ask, brings you to my house again when you had so recently just left it?”

Tommy lights a fag.

Inhales. Inhales again.

They are in the sitting room again, the same couch, the same chair. Tommy feels like he’s drunk, feels like he’s about to vomit. He always feels like that now. It pisses him off.

He doesn’t know what the fuck to say.

“I came to see an old friend.”

A pause. It goes on for much longer than it would with other people, easier people, people who are afraid of Tommy.

(Because absolutely everyone is. Normally. His kids, his brothers, and even Polly. Not Michael, though, because he’s an ungrateful little cunt that Tommy will have to deal with.)

“You have a brilliant sense of humour. I have always said it. Tommy Shelby, although he’s emerged from the medieval shithole that is Birmingham, has a shining wit. This is what I tell people.”

Ever since the rally, ever since the field, Tommy’s all out of words. This is a problem when dealing with Alfie, who quite literally never shuts the fuck up. He can’t remember why he came here.

“I’m flattered,” Tommy manages. He really does feel like he’ll start retching soon. He might have to leave.

He needs to think of a plan, needs something to do.

Alfie can’t be bothered with him today, it seems.

“You look like fucking shit, mate,” he pronounces, before leaning back and looking contemplatively out towards the sea.

People are not supposed to take their eyes of Thomas Shelby, OBE. He’s a threat.

If he’s sick on the floor, will Alfie shoot him, he wonders as the silence stretches on. The answer is probably not, _probably_ being the important word. It’s an interesting thing to think about. Would Tommy kill a man for vomiting in his house? He doesn’t think so, but it depends on the man. And he’d never respect the bastard ever again, so.

It’s not that Tommy wants Alfie to respect him, because everyone has to respect him, even fucking Alfie, but.

He needs to leave, but he doesn’t want to have come here without a concrete reason. He’s trying to think of one.

The problem is.

The –

This is the problem. The problem is that Tommy wants to fucking kill himself. He could just do it and it would all be _over_. He thought he could fix it by shooting Mosley, but it didn’t fucking work because no one ever _listens_ to him, and now everything’s ruined, it’s all gone to shit because he was supposed to kill either himself or Mosley and he hasn’t done either. If he ended Mosley’s life he wouldn’t have to end his own.

He wants to either kill himself or stop thinking about it. He wants, in some dark, shrivelled part of his soul, to tell someone he wants to die.

The larger and much more sensible part understands that this would be excruciating and useless.

“Your cigarette has gone out, mate.”

And it has, ash all down to his fingertips. He puts it in the ashtray, where most of it disintegrates.

He lights another one, and he feels like an unpredictable animal under Alfie’s calculating gaze, cool and watchful. He imagines this is how Alfie Solomons might watch something die.

He wonders if Alfie Solomons would be bothered to watch him die. Would he watch Alfie, as he slipped away?

 _Would you watch me die?_ he nearly says, because something’s been loose in his brain for a while now. He doesn’t need to ask if Alfie would kill him. Alfie might kill him today, if he says the right thing.

But would he care, afterwards?

It doesn’t matter. Tommy is a grown man, and a murderer.

_Fucking get on with it, and stop acting like a little girl._

No, Alfie wouldn’t stick around afterwards.

“So you didn’t kill Mosley. The great Tommy Shelby has not stopped fascism. I, for one, am disappointed, mate. I sent my boys to Birmingham for you.”

“You sent your boys to Birmingham because I paid you twenty-five grand,” and he actually sounds bitter, which, fuck. He can’t remember how to talk.

“Well, yeah, Tommy,” Alfie sounds baffled. “It was not so they could experience the world-famous scenery or general ambiance, nor was it for the general good of my health.”

Another silence, in which Tommy actually remembers to smoke. He looks out through the glass doors this time, keeps Alfie in his peripheral vision. Alfie who is still looking at him like he’s trying to figure him out so he can be finished with him and think about bigger things.

There is no fucking bigger thing, Tommy’s the fucking best. Tommy’s in fucking parliament and where is Alfie? Fucking Margate. Shooting at seagulls, like that’s not absolutely pathetic. Tommy Shelby’s not afraid of anybody and if he was it wouldn’t be fucking Alfie.

He’s like a still tiger in the corner of Tommy’s eye, big and wild and cruel. He’s watching Tommy and he’s going to keep doing it. Tommy came here with no purpose and Alfie knows it. Alfie may be dead but there is still something carnivorous in him that smells blood and salivates at it.

Tommy is sweating too much. He’s not sure when he last ate but his stomach hasn’t stopped churning.

He’s not sure if it’s bad or good that Grace isn’t here right now. He wants to be better.

He wants to be high.

What he really wants is Alfie to forgive him for Mosley.

He’s looking at Tommy now like he’s a horse about to be shot, this sort of soft and removed thing. It’s pity, Tommy realises with a jolt. Alfie is looking at him with pity.

He tries to smoke again, but his mouth is numb and the filter comes away wet with sweat.

“You need a rest, Tommy,” Alfie says, and it’s vaguely teasing.

His relationship to reality, to consciousness, has been touch and go for a while now, but over the last week, since Mosley, it’s been worse, so much worse. It’s hard to remember how he’s appearing to other people.

If he speaks he’ll chuck his guts up into his lap. And he doesn’t know if Alfie can tell.

Why the fuck is he here?

“I don’t know, mate, you fucking tell me, coming here and having a little breakdown all over my fucking living room.”

Shit.

Alfie doesn’t tell him to fuck off, like he should, like Tommy would. He just keeps watching him.

Tommy can still breathe, and Grace still isn’t here.

He doesn’t know if she’d like Alfie. He should know everything about her, she’s his fucking wife.

He’s lost feeling in his hands and his face, maybe his feet. The numbness is an unwieldy one, like he’s obscenely drunk.

Physically he can still see, but he’s not paying any attention to it, so it’s a surprise when he sees Alfie’s face inches from his own, realises there’s a rough hand on his shoulder.

He stares, unable to do anything but breathe and sweat and let spit collect in his open mouth.

“Oi. Oi! Tommy! Fucking look at me, you mental case.”

He already is. His eyes are already locked onto Alfie’s. He doesn’t like looking straight into Alfie’s eyes. He’s not sure why it bothers him, but it does. He keeps doing it.

He’s a dying animal, but Alfie’s not trying to kill him. Instead he grasps him firmly by the shoulder and rattles him a bit. Grabs him, then, by the side of the neck, where it meets the shoulder.

“You’re alright now,” very softly, like Tommy would if he was convincing a woman, or a horse.

He nods and Alfie lets go of him, steps back. Doesn’t sit back down.

“Fucking hell. If I were you, Tommy, I would leave now.”

It’s not a suggestion, and it’s not a threat. It’s that Alfie doesn’t want to watch him die, doesn’t dislike Tommy enough to enjoy seeing this, but also doesn’t like him enough to let it happen in his house.

He gets up. Still can’t feel his feet. It’s a horrible sensation, not painful but wrong. The disgust tightens his throat.

He looks at Alfie for one cold, desperate moment - _forgive me for Mosley you fucking prick or I swear to God I’ll do it_ \- before turning on his heel.

He doesn’t even get to his car before he’s doubled over, hacking up long strings of saliva and nothing else.

**Author's Note:**

> please comment and tell me your thoughts!


End file.
